Forbidden Archeology_ The Full Unabridged Edition - Michael A. Cremo [172]
Laing (1894, p. 356) listed the flint implements found in the Early Miocene at Thenay as one of many cases “in which the preponderance of evidence and authority in support of Tertiary man seems so decisive, that nothing but a preconceived bias against the antiquity of the human race can refuse to accept it.”
Laing (1894, pp. 363–364) told the history of the finds: “When specimens of the flints from Thenay were first submitted to the Anthropological Congress at Brussels in 1867, their human origin was admitted by MM. Worsae, de Vibraye, de Mortillet, and Schmidt, and rejected by MM. Nilson, Hebert, and others, while M. Quatrefages reserved his opinion, thinking a strong case made out, but not being entirely satisfied. M. Bourgeois himself was partly responsible for these doubts, for, like Boucher de Perthes, he had injured his case by overstating it, and including a number of small flints, which might have been, and probably were, merely natural specimens. But the whole collection having been transferred to the Archeological Museum at St. Germain, its director, M. Mortillet, selected those which appeared most demonstrative of human origin, and placed them in a glass case, side by side with similar types of undoubted Quaternary implements. This removed a great many doubts, and later discoveries of still better specimens of the type of scrapers have, in the words of Quatrefages, ‘dispelled his last doubts,’ while not a single instance has occurred of any convert in the opposite direction, or of any opponent who has adduced facts contradicting the conclusions of Quatrefages, Mortillet, and Hamy, after an equally careful and minute investigation.”
Laing (1894, p. 370) then went on to say: “The scraper of the Esquimaux and the Andaman islanders is but an enlarged and improved edition of the Miocene scraper, and in the latter cases the stones seem to have been split by the same agency, viz. that of fire. The early knowledge of fire is also confirmed by the discovery, reported by M. Bourgeois in the Orleans Sand at Thenay, with bones of mastodon and dinotherium, of a stony fragment mixed with carbon, in a sort of hardened paste, which . . . must be the remnant of a hearth on which there had been a fire.”
In any case, the evidence that an intelligent being of the human type produced the flints of Thenay around 20 million years ago in the Early Miocene seems overwhelming. But some authorities believed the being was not of the modern human type, but rather a more primitive ancestor, as required by evolutionary theory. The controversy was vehement. As this question will come up again and again in our review of evidence for the presence of humans in Tertiary times, we shall now give this matter some detailed consideration.
4.2.2 Evolution and the Nature of Tertiary Man
In his book Hommes Fossiles et Hommes Sauvages, A. de Quatrefages (1884, p. 80) noted: “The problem of Tertiary man is singularly obscured by the fact that solutions are too often dictated by opinions held a priori, deriving from extremely opposing theories.” The opposing theories and opinions were those of the Darwinists and the Biblical creationists. Uncomfortable with the views of both these groups, de Quatrefages (1884, p. 80) went on to say: “The elements of a conviction based on purely scientific and rational grounds are not numerous. It is easy to see that men of equal intelligence and experience can have different opinions or hesitate to give any opinion whatsoever. But Darwinian doctrines and dogmatic religious convictions have obviously influenced scientific discussion on this matter.”
As of